Meet Nicole Runyon

Dr Andrew Greenland 0:01

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Voices in Health and Wellness. This is the podcast where we explore the stories, the challenges, and the breakthroughs shaping how we care for ourselves and others. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Greenland, and today I'm joined by someone who's making a profound impact on how families grow and heal. Nicole Runyon. Nicole is a psychotherapist, keynote speaker, and parent coach, and the author of the best-selling book Free to Fly: A Secret to Fostering Independence in the Next Generation. Her work centers on helping parents and caregivers cultivate emotional independence, not just in their children, but within themselves, blending clinical insight with compassion and real-world tools for stronger, healthier family dynamics. Nicole, welcome. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the show.

Nicole Runyon 0:44

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Dr Andrew Greenland 0:47

Wonderful. Perhaps you could start from the top. Just tell us a little bit about your journey and how you ended up doing what you do.

The alarming spike in teen distress

Nicole Runyon 0:53

I was seeing children in a psychotherapy setting for about 20 years. And right around 2014, 2015, I had noticed a pattern in my practice that was quite bizarre and nothing I'd ever experienced before. I was getting an influx of mainly adolescent girls who were having severe mental health experiences. They were coming out of the hospital after their first suicide attempts. They were self-harming, extreme eating disorders, panic disorder to the point of not wanting to leave their rooms and go to school and do anything that they used to enjoy. And in my training, of course, with a child experiencing extreme, severe mental health issues, we understand that it's always likely rooted in some kind of trauma, some kind of environmental situation, neglect, abuse. And none of that was happening in these families that I was working with. Most families were intact. Parents were loving and supportive. They were showing up, they were coming to the therapy with the kids. And so I couldn't quite figure out why I was seeing the severity of symptoms that I was seeing. And at the time, nobody was really talking about our broader cultural issues with technology coming on the scene, smart devices, social media, and how it might be affecting

Tech, schools, and the mental health link

Nicole Runyon 2:25

our kids. In fact, the the devices were being celebrated. We thought it was going to make the kids smarter and, you know, this is the way of the future, and we need to teach them how to use it. But I saw a direct correlation when schools started to allow the children to use their devices all day long to their mental health symptoms. And so I started talking about it. But at the time, people weren't, they might have been interested and fascinated and thought, yeah, there's probably something to this, but not particularly motivated to do anything about it. And then those years went into the uh COVID years with the lockdowns. And then we had more kids on more devices for longer. And it became quite clear to mainstream that, yeah, these devices are affecting their mental health. And so I decided that rather than seeing children for therapy, pathologizing them, giving them diagnoses, pointing the finger and saying, well, you're addicted to your device, and so this is your problem. I thought, what if I worked with their parents? It would be so much more powerful to help the parents step into their authority, change the environment, have better limits on devices, or don't have devices at all at certain ages. And then we're not only helping those mental health symptoms to not have to go into a system, the mental health system, and be medicated. And, you know, a lot of times it was making it worse to treat this from a mental health perspective. But we could also prevent younger kids from entering into the system because it's almost inevitable. If we don't understand child development on a very

Shifting from child therapy to parent coaching

Nicole Runyon 4:07

deep level and how these devices are infiltrating that development every single day, then we are going to continue to have this influx of mentally ill children. And we will never have the infrastructure in the mental health system to service these kids. And one of the other sort of you know um branches of this was I was noticing that kids who actually really do need therapy, kids who have genuine trauma, they couldn't get the therapy because there was no access. The therapists I know that see children are often very booked up, have a wait list. So are the psychiatrists, so are the psychologists who are doing psychological testing because a lot of parents are seeking these diagnoses. They want some kind of an answer for why their children are reacting the way they're reacting. And I think the kids are the canaries in the coal mine. They're sending us a message and their behavior and their mental health symptoms, and we need to listen, and we're not listening. And so I my goal is to get this message out to as many people as possible, parents, educators, anyone that's interfacing with children, because

Capacity crisis in the mental health system

Nicole Runyon 5:20

we don't really have a good understanding of it in our culture, and we need to, and that's what our kids deserve is for us to understand it and step into our authority and acknowledge that we have a part in it. And we have like a much bigger part than we think.

Dr Andrew Greenland 5:35

Thank you. And we'll see, we'll go into the meat of some of what you've talked about around the devices and working with families as we go through. But what was your inspiration for becoming a psychotherapist in the first place?

Nicole Runyon 5:45

If we wind back even further, oh yeah, that's way back. Uh I knew that I wanted to be a therapist when I was 10 years old. I had always um loved younger kids. I was the older, I was on the older end of my sib ships. Uh, I there's five kids in my family. I was also on the older end of um my cousins, who I spent a lot of time with growing up. And I just always enjoyed being with younger kids and taking care of them and playing with them. And um, my youngest brother is nine years older than nine years younger than me. And when he was a toddling toddler, I was about 10, and he had fallen and scraped his knees. And uh at the time I thought, well, I want to either be a pediatrician

Early calling to child psychotherapy

Nicole Runyon 6:30

or I want to be a child therapist. I don't even know how I knew what those things were at that point in my life, but I did know I wanted to help children. And so he skinned his knees, I helped him clean it up and bandaged it. And the whole time I had this pit in my stomach. And it wasn't like a weak at the knees, side of the blood kind of thing. I don't, I, I don't mind blood, I don't mind um, you know, things like that. But I I came to realize that it was like an empathy feeling. And in that moment, I said to myself, well, I guess I can't be a pediatrician if I can't manage a knee scrape without, you know, getting a pit in my stomach. And so I thought, well, I'm gonna be a child therapist. And I never wavered. I uh graduated from college early because I knew exactly what I wanted. And I, you know, set my major very quickly and just moved forward with um with being able to serve children. And um I never looked back, never changed my mind.

Dr Andrew Greenland 7:30

I love hearing about the journey because it's so interesting to hear how people have got from got into what they do, and it's always different and interesting, and the inspirations and drivers that um shape your kind of path of development really, really interesting. So I guess since your work really centers on helping both parents and children find a healthy sense of independence. What does that mean to you and how do you see it sort of transforming the work you do with families?

Nicole Runyon 7:56

I think that the goal of parenting, and I have two kids myself, is to do two things. One is we want them to be okay out in the world without us because we aren't going to be here forever. And two is we want them to do better than us. We want to end any kind of generational trauma. We want to make sure that

Defining emotional independence

Nicole Runyon 8:20

we um pass on uh, you know, wisdom and uh what we've learned and the mistakes we've made. And certainly they're going to make mistakes, but hopefully they make different mistakes, not the same ones we did. And, you know, I come from a family, we we it's a Lebanese family, and so um in our culture, the parents are very much interested in sacrificing for their kids, and that there's that energy of we want you to do better than we did, and we want you to thrive, and we made sacrifices and did hard things so that you could do that. And that I bring that culture that I was raised in into my work very much.

Dr Andrew Greenland 9:08

Thank you. And do you find the emotional independence looks different in this generation of kids and parents compared to what's gone before?

Nicole Runyon 9:16

Absolutely, it looks

The parenting pendulum: limits and love

Nicole Runyon 9:18

different. Um, I think culturally we have parenting practices that what are what I call the pendulum swing. So we're on one end of the pendulum in one generation. And because there's wounding and we didn't like some of those things, we go too far to the other end of the pendulum. And so I think that's what we're doing right now with our current generation of kids. I think we didn't like the strictness or the authoritarian kind of parents that said, you know, my way is it, my way goes, and you don't get to decide because you're the kid and I'm the adult. We didn't like that. And so we're going way too far in the other direction of permissiveness, making our kids happy, making them comfortable. And what we really ought to be doing is taking a little bit of what we got, because some of that is good to have strict rules and boundaries, to have high expectations and high demands, to demand respect. Um, but we also on the other end want to have high love and high support and um helping our kids through the hard things, not doing it for them, not uh changing and making it easier, acknowledging that life is hard and they're going to have some challenges, allowing for that, but giving them a lot of love and nurturing on the other end so that they feel like they can and they're capable. And somewhere in the middle is a really hard balance to strike for most people. But if we understand child development and what they need and when they need it, then it's a whole lot easier to give them those challenges with the high love.

Dr Andrew Greenland 11:01

Thank

Free to Fly: core ideas for parents

Dr Andrew Greenland 11:02

you. Um, tell us a bit about the book Free to Fly and specifically what message were you trying to get through to parents? So, what did you want them to take away from having read the book?

Nicole Runyon 11:11

I want parents to know that with the knowledge, um, you have a lot more power than you think you have. I think we have outsourced almost everything in our lives for convenience, including our parenting. And what I noticed in my practice was that parents were outsourcing connection to me. And so I may have been successful with their kids because I know how to connect, but it was taking a long time. And parents can connect to their kids way quicker than I can and make changes way quicker than any therapist because they're more positioned to do so. And so I want them to feel confident, I want them to be sure of their ability to do that, and I'm giving them uh the knowledge in the book of child development uh in like lots of in four different parts. So there's the movement, kids need movement from day one, and then movement scaffolds the brain for growth. So I talk about cognitive development, and then once they're they're all set in their brain, then they can start to go through the stages of psychosocial development, and then they can have what's what I consider a connection to self, which is three points in childhood where children gain their independence. So I map that out for parents, and

Movement, brain growth, and stages

Nicole Runyon 12:40

I think that with that understanding, parents can know that they are so much more powerful than they think they are. I do a lot of talking about technology, I talk about food and how ultra-processed food with um high sugar affects all of that development and how technology infiltrates the development. And so I help parents understand that if you if you can say, no, we are not a family that does what everybody else is doing. We are a family that you know takes care of our body and takes care of our mind and prioritizes connection, then you're going to have a thriving, healthy family and children can grow into their maturity and their independence naturally. And it's not as hard as you know trying to navigate everything going on in the culture and still trying to raise kids who are independent.

Dr Andrew Greenland 13:39

Thank

Food, tech, and family culture choices

Dr Andrew Greenland 13:40

you. So, how receptive are families to doing this kind of work? I mean, are they expecting to turn up and you're going to be working with the child? And when you kind of say, well, actually, I want to take a broader approach and work with you as a family, how is that received? Do you get any kind of pushback or but just give me a sense of things?

Nicole Runyon 13:56

I get a lot of pushback. Uh, I think we are in a therapy culture for sure. I think we are um idolizing therapy to uh to our detriment. And I'm still a therapist. I still see clients for therapy. Uh, I'm not anti-therapy, I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but I do think that there's a problem when we use it when we don't need it. And it's causing a lot more problems to use it when we don't need it. So I really like uh for parents to know that my process is one where I help you help your child. So I'm helping your child through you, and it doesn't take as long. You

Pushback on family-led change

Nicole Runyon 14:40

know, what would take me one to two years to do with a child takes three months to work with the parent. And the pushback is it's very anti-what everybody else is doing. What everyone else is doing is dropping their kids off to therapy and picking them up, just like soccer practice. And it's not working. So uh it's so it's really hard to um change this paradigm for people, but I believe very strongly that this is the way forward.

Dr Andrew Greenland 15:15

And I mean, specifically what things are what what are the things that they push back on the most, or what are the things you find hard to help them to make changes with? Are there any particular examples that are particularly challenging with the families you work with?

Nicole Runyon 15:28

Yeah. Uh the technology, the screen, so the smart devices, the social media, gaming is very addictive for children. And so what is the most common issue is that there are symptoms of addiction. Uh, there's a lot of anger, there's meltdowns, there's um even physical uh violence uh from the kids in the home to the parents. And the parents feel that the everything is so out of control that the problem is with the kid and there's nothing that they can do. So they think, well, my kids are addicted

Tech addiction, anxiety, and school avoidance

Nicole Runyon 16:05

to games, to video games. So I have to put them in therapy because the problem is so big that they don't think that there's anything they can do about it. Or anxiety is also a very common issue. And so you have kids who are experiencing panic attacks. Um, they're school avoidant, they won't go to school, and parents don't know how to, you know, make them go out in the world and be a part of things. And so they're accommodating the anxiety by saying, okay, you don't have to go to school, or okay, you don't have to do this. I'm gonna make your life easy, and then I'm going to put you in therapy. But they're not acknowledging what it took to get that kid to be experiencing panic. Because again, absent any trauma, there is no reason why kids should be at this level of anxiety. And I think parents uh need to acknowledge that the environment is what's creating it, and they're the ones that are powerfully positioned to change that environment.

Dr Andrew Greenland 17:03

Thank you. I guess if you're working with families, you must come across um the parents' own traumas and boundary issues and self-awareness issues. How do you work with those when you're trying to help the child? You're trying to work with the broader family, but you can clearly see some inverted commas

Coaching parents without the child present

Dr Andrew Greenland 17:20

baggage with the parents themselves.

Nicole Runyon 17:21

Yeah. Well, I actually don't even include the child in the in the coaching that I'm doing with parents, uh, because unless they're older, maybe if they're an older teenager or a young adult. Um, but when when I include the child, then it becomes it's still the child is the focus and and sort of the scapegoat. So I eliminate the child even just from the the room uh or the zoom room, because I can I do this on Zoom as well. And um what I do is help the parents to see that um what's missing for them is exactly what you're saying, the self-reflection piece. I work with them on four pillars:

Four pillars: reflection, development, tech, independence

Nicole Runyon 18:05

self-reflection, child development, technology, and independence. And what tends to happen is we focus on the kid's behavior, what the parents can do about the behavior. We kind of, in a sense, plug that hole and things get calmer because the child's behavior starts to get better. That's where I start. And then it inevitably becomes about the parent. Their stuff starts coming up. They want to talk about hey, how did we get here? Um, why do I react this way? How can I sustainably uh, you know, continue on with what I'm learning here? And yeah, what comes up is all the things that they didn't get, their unresolved childhood wounds, their um missing developmental uh stages. And because it's coaching and not therapy, um, I can help them kind of move through that uh pretty quickly so that they can feel like confident and sure of themselves that they can help their children. And I call it the mirror, that's

Going online: scaling impact and reach

Nicole Runyon 19:10

the first chapter in my book, is that we are reacting to um our kids based on our own stuff. And if we don't take ownership of that and work through that, then our parenting is going to be really hard.

Dr Andrew Greenland 19:23

Thank you. And you mentioned that earlier on there about the Zoom room. I was just gonna ask you about um navigating hybrid models of care because I know lots of practitioners are exploring online programs, group coaching, speaking engagements. How has that evolution played out in your work and what you do?

Nicole Runyon 19:37

Uh it's opened up an entire, you know, world for me. I uh joke that I was living under a rock because my office, when I was in private practice, is literally in the basement of a building. So um, you know, it was just me and by myself with the client. And uh I didn't know that there was this whole world of being able to help people online uh until about two years ago when I started to put my work uh online and on social media and writing the book and um trying to uh get that out to people. And I realized that uh I can have such a big impact if you know I'm speaking, I'm talking to you, and you know, people are hearing this message on a broader scale. And it's

What grows the business now

Nicole Runyon 20:27

it's quite empowering.

Dr Andrew Greenland 20:30

Thank you. And um obviously you're running a business, you're seeing patients, you have a client base. What's working really well for you in the from a business perspective right now, in terms of the the way that you deliver your model?

Nicole Runyon 20:42

Uh actually being on podcasts like yours, uh, you know, just people who otherwise wouldn't hear my message are hearing it and um it's resonating, and I'm getting to meet uh people doing great work like you. And I love that. That's my favorite part of it. And I was very resistant uh to get on social media.

Handling backlash and rejection

Nicole Runyon 21:03

Obviously, I'm you know telling parents to get kids off social media, and then here I am on social media, uh, but I'm realizing that there are some positives to it, and um, you know, you and I would have never met had it not been for social media.

Dr Andrew Greenland 21:16

Well, I'm obviously very glad to have you on this session, and obviously we do what we can to promote and spread your word. Um, on the flip side, I mean, what's um what's one of the sort of challenges you've had to overcome in doing this work recently or since you've um changed your model?

Nicole Runyon 21:31

Well, that pushback that we've talked about, um, that's been the hardest part. You know, it's um when you go against the status quo, it it feels threatening to people. And when people are threatened, they tend to attack. And uh, you know, I knew that that this wasn't going to be easy. I wasn't naive. I knew that people were gonna be mad at me. Um, I thought actually, that the people that were gonna be mad at me were going to be my colleagues, therapists, and you know, educators. Interestingly enough, they're not mad at me at all. They agree with me. So um that's that's been a pleasant surprise. But I get a lot of pushback from parents who have had different experiences, right? I mean, when you're talking to a broad group of people, when you're talking to say every parent, um, you're gonna get parents who have had a different experience than what I'm talking

From waitlists to wider influence

Nicole Runyon 22:27

about. Maybe their kid has been successful in therapy. Um, you know, maybe their kid didn't need a lot of independence. I don't know. I mean, I think all kids need independence, but um what I'm finding is that people take take what I say very personally. And then the attacks are well, that wasn't my experience, and you know, you're crazy and you don't have the it's this is hilarious. You don't have the credentials to be saying what you're saying, even though I'm I've been a licensed therapist for 23 years. So um, yeah, that's been the hardest part is um that not taking it personally, accepting that not everybody's going to like what I'm saying, and not everybody's going to like me. Um, and just the feeling that rejection. I've also had a lot of doors slammed in my face, um, you know, applied for speaking um engagements and uh tried to, you know, get parents to uh hire me to coach them. And there's a lot of rejection in what I'm doing. Uh, there certainly was no hardly any rejection ever when I was a therapist.

If demand surges: ops and support

Nicole Runyon 23:30

I was full for five years. And when I say full, I mean a wait list um so long that I had to then turn people away. And so it's that's been an interesting metamorphosis, is I had no idea that it was going to be this hard to sell what I'm trying to do.

Dr Andrew Greenland 23:54

In some ways, a waiting list is a nice problem to have sometimes. Um, not if it creates overwhelm on the other end of the thing, I guess.

Nicole Runyon 24:02

Well, sure. From a business perspective, it was great. I, you know, I never had to worry about how I was going to pay my bills, but that

Lessons learned and resilience

Nicole Runyon 24:12

wasn't settling right for me. Like I I wanted to make more of a difference. I didn't want to have to turn people away. I wanted to serve those families that I couldn't see one-on-one in a different way. And I originally had thought, so I was just by myself in private practice. So originally I thought, well, I'll just start a group practice. I'll hire other therapists, they'll get to see these referrals that I have to turn away because I'm only one person. And then I realized

The next 6–12 months focus

Nicole Runyon 24:42

I don't want to do that either. Because then that's just again, sort of perpetuating this idea that it's the kids, it's the kids, it's the kids. And so that's why I decided to uh take this to more of a macro uh level and speak to parents and speak to people who are more in control of our kids' environments. And I knew I could make more of an impact doing that, but it's been

One piece of advice for overwhelmed parents

Nicole Runyon 25:07

hard.

Dr Andrew Greenland 25:07

Of course. And if you had a magic wand and you could fix any bottleneck in the business tomorrow, and you will exclude pushback because you've already mentioned that, and the magic wand may not stretch that far. Well, is there anything else that you'd like to be able to fix tomorrow with your magic wand?

Nicole Runyon 25:22

Oh, I love that question. There's so many things. Um if I had a magic wand, I would uh maybe tap everybody's forehead and say, just start thinking about this differently, please. You know, I don't have to be right. You don't have to agree with me. Maybe you decide I'm crazy. That's fine. But just open up your mind and think about it. Don't dismiss it right away.

Dr Andrew Greenland 25:53

Now, I don't know how powerful podcasts are, but you never know who's listening. And you might get a massive influx of uh referrals or um people wanting to work with you next week. If that was to happen, what will be the first thing that would break? And don't hopefully say don't not you, but um just curious to know because obviously you mentioned you had a wait list before you're trying to scale your impact and your reach without burning yourself out. But what would happen if a whole raft of people turned up on your doorstep next week?

Nicole Runyon 26:19

Uh I would have to hire probably a virtual assistant to manage the admin side of things. Um, but you know, being in front of parents, that is completely manageable for me. That's where I thrive, that's where I'm most happy. Um, I don't love the tech side of what I'm trying to do. So I would love to be able to hire somebody to do that for me.

Dr Andrew Greenland 26:41

That's amazing. And if you are starting again tomorrow with everything that you knew from your experience, whether that be the coaching and the speaking practice, is there anything you would do differently?

Nicole Runyon 26:54

No, I don't think so. I mean, I've made some mistakes, but I think I needed to make those, so I learn. And um, you know, the challenge, the fact that it's hard, is showing me every day that I have the capacity to manage way more than I ever thought I could, and that I'm capable of doing hard things. And that feels really good.

Dr Andrew Greenland 27:18

Thank you. And think about the future, next maybe the next six to twelve months. What do you most focus on creating or improving going forward?

Nicole Runyon 27:27

Uh, I would like to have um more parents trust me to work with them. And then I would like for those parents to tell everyone they know uh that the work with me is so powerful and um that they they acknowledge that they have a part in what's going on in their families, and they have a bigger part than they think, and they feel capable and strong enough to manage it with my help.

Dr Andrew Greenland 27:59

Brilliant. And finally, what's one piece of advice you'd give to parents who are feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to get it right in inverted commas?

Nicole Runyon 28:07

Oh well, I just mentioned making mistakes and accepting that because we learn from them. And that's what I would tell parents is it's perfectly okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. And when you learn from them, you go to your kids and you apologize for those mistakes and you allow them to experience their own disappointment in you and their own pain of experiencing your mistake. Because our kids do need uh good enough parents. They don't need perfect parents, they need parents who uh can acknowledge that there are challenges and sit in that pain with their kids and get to the other side of it because that's how our kids gain resiliency and learn and grow.

Dr Andrew Greenland 28:53

Um and on that profound note, Nicole, I would like to thank you so very much for joining us on this call for your interesting, insightful, and very honest conversation about you, your work, what you do, talking a little bit about your book, which we'll obviously put on the bio page and promote as part of this.

Closing thanks and resources

Dr Andrew Greenland 29:09

But I'd really like to thank you so much for joining me.

Nicole Runyon 29:11

Thank you for having me. This was a lovely conversation.